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The Week in Germany: Culture March 30, 2007 Daniel Barenboim Awarded a 2007 Goethe Medal for Promoting
Intercultural Dialogue through the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Internationally acclaimed Berlin-based pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim
has received a top honor from the Goethe Institut for his commitment to
fostering intercultural exchange among young musicians. Once a year, on 22 March, the anniversary of Goethe's death, the Goethe
Institut awards the Goethe Medal, an official decoration of the Federal
Republic of Germany. It honors outstanding personalities for their special
services towards promoting international cultural dialogue. Jutta Limbach, the president of the Goethe Institut, granted this year's
medals to Barenboim, the Hungarian author and translator Dezso Tandori
and the Korean theater director and songwriter Min'Gi Kim in Weimar.
The
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which Barenboim founded together with
the late Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said and which first met
in Weimar in 1999, brings together young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian
Territories, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Europe for workshops and
concert tours. Barenboim's has also established a youth music school in the Palestinian
Territories and music kindergartens in Ramallah and in Berlin. "He
conveys dialogues into an open, mutual space, in polyphony, in order to
understand differences, allow oneself to change and build mutual standpoints
on this," said laudatory speaker Adrienne Göhler, a freelance
publicist and curator. Nassib Al-Ahmadieh, a young Lebanese musician from the West-Eastern Divan
Orchestra who studies cello at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar,
accepted the Goethe Medal on behalf of Barenboim. Born in Buenos Aires in 1942 to parents of Jewish Russian descent, Barenboim
is a bona fide "global citizen" of Argentina, Israel, Europe
and the United States. From 1991 to 2006 he was Music Director of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has
named him "honorary conductor for life". In 1992 he became General
Music Director of the Deutsche
Staatsoper Berlin, or Berlin State Opera, and in 2000 its Staatskapelle
orchestra appointed him Chief Conductor for Life. (TWIG/Goethe Institut/Daniel
Barenboim official website) Links:
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